Super Bowl Recap: The Wait, What?! Edition

Well, this is awkward.  About this time last night, I was feeling smug but down and out that my Falcons Super Bowl pick was going to turn out more than a little right and that the Saints would no longer have any kind of leg up on their only rival with an MVP and a Lombardi.  And then the most twisted of miracles happened and we saw not only our first Super Bowl overtime, but the largest championship comeback (or collapse depending on your side of the coin) of all time and a whole bunch of shattered playoff records.  I was as stunned and thrilled as all of those 'Yats shooting fireworks in Metairie as James White crossed the goal line one last time, and yet, it just makes me feel a little icky to gloat too much here about Atlanta's historic self-destruction when I know most of you are channeling some Season 4 Tyra Banks with those Falcons:

As stupidly prideful as I am about those Dirty Birds' misery relative to that of my own dumb team, I certainly cannot say I feel much of anything about the Patriots having everything ultimately go their way once more and crushing the souls and dreams of 98% of America.  If I had to rank all of the teams I wanted to see in a Super Bowl this year, I can assure you these would be #31 and #32, despite the objectively fantastic show they put on.  But in the spirit of empathy we all so desperately need these days, I can say with a genuine heart that I feel for Falcons fans.  There's only been one sporting event in my life that ever made me cry, and it was when the Memphis Tigers blew a nine-point lead with two minutes to go in the NCAA men's championship against the Kansas Jayhawks in 2008.  It was the surety and the joy of those minutes just prior, that we would finally win it all before someone lured John Calipari away to greener booster pastures and the country would take notice of that scrappy, underestimated team and its doting city.  And then it all crumbled away in the blink of an eye on a series of missed free throws, a 3-point dagger at the buzzer from Mario Chalmers to send it to overtime, and then the immediate, inevitable dread that the Tigers' momentum would never again resurface. Even though it's just sports, to have all of your dreams realized in the palm of your hand and then watch them unthinkably melt away in minutes is a devastating feeling - one that Atlanta sports fans have felt more often than most.

And so, I will offer you a handful of disjointed thoughts on the game as we close the books on one of the weirder, more bittersweet seasons that I can remember.

The Falcons Still Deserved to Win This One

Before all you Pats fans start with your "buts" (and honestly, you should be hiding under a rock for the next 3 - 4 weeks if you're outside of the New England area while everyone else licks their wounds), I simply mean here that Atlanta played well enough to win and it's more than they'll get credit for in the thousands of recountings of bad clock management and play-calling.  We figured from the get-go that Atlanta's offense would have its moments, and boy did they deliver on a series of big plays and touchdown strikes from Devonta Freeman, Matt Ryan and Tevin Coleman.  And you really can't pin this loss on Ryan - he was exceptional for most of the game at 12 yards per completion and a 144.1 passer rating (158 is a perfect rating for you non-stat heads).  But even better and more surprising was the Falcons' defense, holding the Patriots to just 3 points and garnering a pick six in the first half.  They did exactly what most people thought they wouldn't be able to in getting consistent pressure on Tom Brady for most of the game including 12 QB hits and five sacks, three of which came from rookie Grady Jarrett, whom I've never heard of.

But going into the late stages of the game with a +2 turnover margin and a 25-point lead, it just felt like the Falcons never saw the comeback coming (who did?!) until it was too late. That pick six and recovered fumble earlier gave Atlanta a lot less distance to the goal line and thus a lower snap count and time of possession than that of the Patriots by a decent margin by the start of the fourth quarter.   Could they have run the ball and taken the play clock down to nothing more?  Absolutely.  But when you're facing a win probability over 99% and you've got the reigning MVP playing an excellent game against a good defense, it's not as much of a risk 99 times out of 100 as you'd think.  We've got hindsight for days about those two disastrous passing plays when the Falcons found themselves at the Patriots' 22 yardline late in the quarter, but had they even ended in simple incompletions, which is the worst-case scenario most of the time, we'd be having a whole different conversation today.  New England played incredibly well to have a chance, but they also needed some very unlikely lucky bounces like that sequence, a Matt Ryan fumble, a miracle catch from Julian Edelman AND a winning coin toss to go to overtime to pull it off.

We All Deserved Some Better and Weirder Window Dressing

It's well past cliche at this point to say that Super Bowl [insert numerals here]'s commercials or halftime show didn't live up to the hype.  And I guess this year's edition wasn't particularly horrendous compared to the PuppyMonkeyBabies and Black-Eyed Peas of yore.  Still, given all of the crazy things in the world these days worth skewering and/or showering in glitter and animatronic tigers (or something), I gotta say I wish there had been a little more zaniness in a dumb consumables commercial and a little more Lady Gaga wearing a meat dress or Kermits or shooting lasers out of her armpits. Just something to shake up all of the heavy stuff that was probably well-intentioned but just dragged down the mood even more as the Patriots' death machine set its sights on those scrappy and doomed Falcons.  Now, these ad agencies have just as much right as any of us to preach from the kumbaya gospel if it means stronger first-quarter car sales, but when they all choose that path, it can kill your buzz when you just once want to see a Jack Russell terrier bite a man's crotch or do a CGI variety number to the tune of "Superfreak."  We need more balance in the force.

James White Most Definitely Should Have Been the MVP

Am I saying Tom Brady wasn't spectacular?  I am not.  I'm not sure I could name another quarterback in the NFL who could get punished on virtually every down in the first half, toss a back-breaking pick six and still have the mettle to pull off a 31-point rally in the biggest sporting event of the year.  And whether you like the guy or [likely] not, it's impossible to refute his legacy and now nearly impossible to call anyone else the greatest football player of all time.  But even No. 12 agrees that his oft-overlooked hybrid back James White was more instrumental in digging the Patriots out from six feet under.  To wit, White set new Super Bowl records for receptions and points scored by a single player with three touchdowns and a two-point conversion.  He outgained Julian Edelman and Julio Jones through the air, gave New England a more efficient spark on the ground when LeGarrette Blount couldn't get it going in the first half and ultimately played on over 70 of the Patriots' monstrous 93 snaps.  That's an insane amount of impressive work for a guy who's often been third on New England's depth chart, and the Pats just wouldn't have been able to pull off the impossible without his super-clutch two-point conversion to help send it to overtime or that memorable fight at the goal line for the game winner.

At Least We Can All Agree on Booing Rodger Goodell

If there's one other small consolation for anyone rooting for the Falcons/non-Patriots last night, you have to admit those chowderheads sure gave Goodell the demonic circle of boos he deserved when the dust settled.  If you can, separate in your mind the fact that Pats fans were booing about getting caught cheating and having to deal with the [to be fair, completely ridiculous] consequences.  This boo was also for all of us taxpayers having to shell out for those billionaire owners when they want the seats reupholstered and for the many players who've gotten tangled up in the Ginger Hammer's nonsensical kangaroo court where customized shoes and marijuana merit harsher penalties than [non-televised] domestic abuse.  So if this was the Super Bowl of the kumbaya gospel, I guess I'll close by saying this boo was made for you and me.